Canon G9 Image Noise Tests

We test the Canon G9 digital camera for image noise
The Canon G-series have been great cameras, filling a great middle position between compact digitals and the digital SLR crowd. The G9 is a very nicely designed camera, having great control placement and layout, a good size and excellent image quality, at least at the lowest ISO settings.

And a 100% section:

Image quality is great at low ISO settings, with the above image having a slight Levels adjustment and small unsharp mask sharpening.

The zoom range is a handy 35-210mm equivalent.

The relatively greater depth of field of a small sensor camera does come into play and can be beneficial.

Macro focusing down to 1cm is a great capability on this camera.

But one major issue for the G-series has been that they use sensors the same size as compact cameras, and so generally have much more image noise than a dSLR does.

So how does it work at higher ISO settings? Well the shots below are unprocessed 100% crops from near the center of an image:

80ISO

100ISO

200ISO

400ISO

I stopped at 400ISO because the noise was so high.

Using out test target, I shot at all the ISO settings, both at daylight short exposures and at night exposures.

Day exposures:

In day exposures the noise builds up very quickly above 200ISO.

For the night exposures below we started at f4 and 15 seconds. Now since the G9 only has a limited range of f-stops (smallest is f8) only the 80 and 100ISO night exposures where 15 seconds, the rest used shorter exposures as the sensitivity went up:

Again, anything over 200ISO has a lot of noise.

To make this clear, look at the histograms below taken from the day time exposures:

You can see the distinct steps of the step wedge at 80 and 100ISO but by 400ISO they are quite spread, which is typical of a small sensor camera.

So I love the G9 at low ISO settings but, personally, find the noise levels too high at anything above 200ISO.